


Stale Goodbyes

by paper_cuts



Category: B.A.P
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-05
Updated: 2015-06-05
Packaged: 2018-04-02 23:29:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4077919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paper_cuts/pseuds/paper_cuts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>PROMPT-  My first kiss was under the dying tree in the backyard and tasted like desperation and cigarettes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stale Goodbyes

**Author's Note:**

> This isn't very long. Prompt from here: http://unblockingwritersblock.tumblr.com/post/119300110049/writing-prompt-223-write-this-story

His first kiss was under the dying tree in the backyard and tasted like desperation and cigarettes.  
  
Yongguk was leaving. Yongguk was leaving him. Yongguk was going to walk away and not look back and Daehyun hated him for it.  
  
He spent the three days leading up to his goodbye party as far away from his next door neighbor as he could.  
  
One day was wasted volunteering to clean his grandmother's basement out. Every time his phone would beep with a text or Yongguk's wide smile would pop up on the screen he would flick a finger between his plastic eyes and shove the phone back into his pocket.  
  
The second day was a little harder to get away. Yongguk had caught on that Daehyun was ignoring him and was already throwing rocks across the tiny alley between their bedroom windows by six in the morning.  
  
When he heard the tiny stones plinking across the glass it felt like boulders being slammed against his chest. For the first time in their fifteen years of living side-by-side, Daehyun didn't wave sleepily but happily at him through the window. Instead he snuck out the back door and ran like hell towards the bus stop.  
  
Surely his grandma needed help with the attic, too.  
  
By the time the last day rolled around and they were twelve hours away from Yongguk saying goodbye and leaving for god knows how long, Daehyun was so frantic to get away in time that he slipped out the door at five AM, running smack dab into his neighbor's chest.  
  
"Really Dae? Trying _that_ hard to ignore me?" Yongguk's eyebrows furrowed together before he managed to smile sadly down at his frozen best friend. "Are you so eager to be rid of me?"  
  
Daehyun didn't care how sad or pitiful Yongguk looked. His own hurt had to be at least ten times larger. He wasn't the one leaving. He was the one being left.  
  
"Move Yongguk."  
  
The words came out so soft that they were barely decipherable to his own ears but Yongguk's shoulders slumped inwards anyways. He let Daehyun bump him aside as he walked stiffly into the woods behind their homes. It was only when he was far enough away that Yongguk couldn't see him that he finally broke out into a run, stumbling over the fallen trees and oversized roots in his way.  
  
He didn't stop until he had made it to their old fort, really just a few pieces of wood nailed up the front of a giant oak tree they had discovered ten years earlier. The tree was almost as dead as their friendship. Years of termites and storms had taken half the branches and left it with large cavities running up and down the trunk but up until Yongguk started high school they had still made it a point to come here together at least a few times a year. They would sit in the high branches and play with their action figures and army men and when they grew too old for toys they would just talk. Daehyun had always loved to listen to Yongguk speak. When they were at school the older boy was quiet and considered shy, but when it was just the two of them he would open up and they could talk about nothing and everything for hours.  
  
Then high school had started.  
  
Yongguk had been slowly pulling away from him and Daehyun hated it but at least he was there, at least he could look out his window and see Yongguk lying on his bed and reading one of those oversized books he loved or sitting at his desk and working on his homework, pencil chewed to bits between his teeth. He was always close enough that Daehyun felt comforted.  
  
Even the first day Daehyun had passed him in the hallway at school and lifted a hand to wave excitedly and Yongguk had barely glanced at him as he walked by with his friends, it had been alright because later that night they had passed notes folded into airplanes through each other's windows.  
  
And when Yongguk had gotten a girlfriend and closed the curtains for the first time ever, Daehyun had felt a little better because the next day they had walked to school the long way to spend more time together.  
  
But now he was leaving and Daehyun knew their friendship was leaving with him.  
  
"I figured you'd be out here."  
  
Yongguk's tired voice broke him out of his thoughts and Daehyun realized it had grown later than he had realized. The sun was high in the sky by now and he was starting to feel sticky with sweat.  
  
"Scoot over." Yongguk was pulling himself up the makeshift steps and onto the tiny square slab of wood they had placed across two branches so that they had somewhere to sit. When they were younger and smaller the seating area had felt huge but now the two of them were squished so close together that Yongguk's knee was digging into Daehyun's thigh.  
  
"Aren't you supposed to be having a party or something." Daehyun kept his eyes glued to the limb beside him but he could hear the rustle of Yongguk digging in his pockets for something and then the click of his lighter. "Those things will kill you."  
  
An inhale and deep exhale were his answers, smoke drifting across his face as Yongguk purposely blew towards him.  
  
After a few minutes of complete silence from the both of them Daehyun could feel his anxiety rising. He lifted his eyes up towards Yongguk's own unwavering stare.  
  
"If I hadn't of come here," Yongguk took another drag of his cigarette, this time blowing the smoke to the side because he knew Daehyun hated it. "Would you have come back in time to tell me goodbye?"  
  
Daehyun hadn't noticed earlier when he had bumped into him on his way out but Yongguk had already buzzed his hair short and it made him look older.  
  
Daehyun would never admit that the jarring cut made Yongguk look more handsome.  
  
"Would you even have cared?"  
  
Yongguk blinked in surprise at the curt reply. "Of course." He sucked in the last slow inhale before smashing the cigarette into the side of the tree and flicking it away. "You're my best friend."  
  
"You have a funny way of showing it."  
  
This was more attitude than Daehyun had ever showed Yongguk in their years and years of friendship and the whiney tone made him smile.  
  
"I have to enlist at some point, Dae. You do, too. What's so wrong about me wanting to get it over with?"  
  
_Because things have been so weird for the last few years and if you leave now I'm scared they'll never go back to normal._  
  
Daehyun kept the truth zipped tight behind thinned lips and lowered his eyes again.  
  
_Because you may be okay without me but I'll be lost when you leave._  
  
Yongguk's knuckles brushed across the hands that were fisted tightly in Daehyun's lap. When he leaned forward his knee dug harder into Daehyun's thigh and it was uncomfortable and a little bit painful but there was nowhere else for them to go because admitting they had outgrown their fort wasn't something Daehyun thought he could do right now.  
  
"I'm coming home, Dae." Yongguk's voice was soft as he tried again to get the rigid boy beside him to open up. "It's only two years, not even that, not really. And I can write to you the whole time."  
  
"But only when your friends aren't around, right?" He had promised himself he wouldn't ever bring up Yongguk's public dismissals of him but he wanted to know once and for all if their closeness was forever going to be something that had to be hidden. "Only when no one can see?"  
  
Yongguk slumped his shoulders in shame. "I've not been a good friend lately. There's been a lot on my mind. I’m sorry."  
  
He didn't want apologies. He wanted his best friend back. And not just when they were alone.  
  
"Are you ashamed of me?" Daehyun hated how his voice cracked on the question as if the answer had the ability to completely destroy him.  
  
"It wasn't you that I was ashamed of." Yongguk carefully cupped Daehyun's cheek in his palm and sighed as the needy boy leaned into the rare display of affection. "That's one of the reasons I conscripted so early. I just need a little more time to become someone that you can be proud of."  
  
But Yongguk should have known that Daehyun was already proud to be his friend. He had three pictures of them hanging in his locker, he went to every single baseball game and cheered until his throat was sore even if Yongguk didn't so much as throw a glance his direction, he had even spent the last three days hiding and feeling sorry for himself because he couldn't bear to lose him.  
  
"Don't go," Daehyun whispered the words against the thin skin of Yongguk's wrist. "Not yet."  
  
When he closed his eyes and let his carefully built wall crumble around him was when he could feel the exact second their relationship shifted and the real meaning behind Yongguk's pulling away finally started to fall in place. The heartbeat already throbbing rapidly against his lips became a frantic pounding and the sound of Yongguk's breath catching drew his eyes to the flushed cheeks and hooded eyes his best friend was showing him.  
  
"It's getting harder and harder to be near you, Daehyun." Yongguk tried to laugh it off as a joke but Daehyun wasn't that dumb and they both knew it.  
  
"Yongguk, I-"  
  
The wrist held tight in his grip was jerked backwards and Yongguk shook his head as he stood to climb down the tree. "My mom will be wondering where I went. I need to head back."  
  
"Can you just w-"  
  
"If I don't see you before I leave then I hope your last year of high school goes great for you."  
  
Yongguk was already two boards down and didn't seem to have any intention of listening no matter how many times Daehyun interjected so he did the only thing he could think of to make him stop. He jumped hurried down after him and grabbed Yongguk by the shoulders, turning him around and shoving him against the tree.  
  
The first time he leaned forward while yanking Yongguk's head down he missed and his lips landed on his chin. Daehyun drew back just far enough to gauge the distance and try again because Yongguk wasn't leaving until he listened to him and he could say a lot without wasting any unnecessary words. Yongguk's lips were already parted in surprise and Daehyun felt his own slip between them like it was natural and had been done a thousand times before.  
  
Daehyun's first kiss was under the dying tree in the backyard and tasted like desperation and cigarettes.  
  
But his second kiss, twenty-two months, three weeks and four days later, while still under that same tree, tasted like home.


End file.
